Story: Heart Songs

Have you ever wondered if those World Vision children are for real? Maybe the dark side in you believes it is an elaborate hoax; every sponsor gets a picture of the same child, who actually is 40 years old by now.
My adult daughter and I traveled to Africa to see her World Vision children. We visited her two boys in Ethiopia, but although it was incredible to sit on the floors of their simple mud huts, we were rushed and had very little time with the families. She has also sponsored a girl in Kenya for ten years, and it was an incredible privilege to visit them on their hill in rural Kenya near Kabernet, about a five hour jouncing, dusty and rugged drive from Nairobi.
We arrived in Kabernet, met with WV officials and made plans to visit Jeritech, my daughter's WV girl, the next day. In the office, we saw the open cabinets lined with packages from sponsors from all the world, just waiting until a trip was made to each child's home. I was anxious to safely disperse some money I had from my church, so I offered what I had left for this WV district to extend their water line project farther up the mountain. Somehow they immediately gathered the entire water committee, including one woman, to receive the money in a spontaneous ceremony. I was surprised to see the water line was literally just a bare pipe lying exposed on the ground, and it had to laboriously follow a circuitous mountain road. They were obviously very pleased with the donation and each official made a speech and, of course, I had to make one too. I told them my church wanted them to know there are people on the other side of the world who care about their health and prosperity. This was one of those perfect moments of hands reaching across differences and cultures, but even it paled next to our visit the next day.
The next morning we drove to the child's home in a very rural, mountainous location, crossing a couple of small streams. I remember re-playing in my head those warnings on TV in hurricane season about not driving through flooded streets and trying to remember how deep the water could be on your car before it floated. When we got to the small house on a hill by itself, the parents were there with the six small children. The oldest boy was twelve. We had brought many hair barrettes and decorations, but the hair of the three girls was cropped just as closely to the head as the boys,' and there was no way to use the hair things. The only way to tell the girls from the boys is that they wore simple dresses. I was glad I had bought one purple hat at the Dollar Tree, so Jeritech could proudly wear that, leaving the tag attached as if she were a small Black Minnie Pearl. Somehow we arrived a day earlier than they expected, so they could not make the cake they had planned for us. The father was sent away to walk to a far market and brought back fruit. Honestly, I was rather glad they did not have the time to make the cake because my guess is that it was an expensive presentation for them.
The girl, Jeritech, was dressed in the same red dress she wore in the photograph sent to my daughter several years ago. It sounds strange, but it was almost shocking that she looked just like her picture. It was just so hard to really comprehend that here was this real and breathing little girl. When you sponsor a child, you really sponsor the whole family because there are many benefits of health benefits and support that are extended to her siblings and parents as well.
This morning was one of the highlights of our entire journey of three weeks through Rome, Italy; Ethiopia, and Kenya. We sat on log benches and the long, exposed knarled roots of the tree that was obviously their 'patio' and shared fruit and gave Jeritech and her family their gifts. What was especially nice was that more and more nearby families got word of our visit, and you could see mothers and children emerging over the crests of the nearby hills as they came to join us. We had the WV men with us who acted as translators for us all, and I think they were enjoying the day as much as we all were. Jeritech's family were sharing their new jump rope and soccer ball. There is no place I would rather be than on that hillside in Kenya watching those kids jump rope and play soccer, shouting gleefully in a language that we interpreted by the joy. There was an incredible sense of one world community which I believe we all basked in and did not want to end. It was if time stood still, and this was the only place in the world that was real or mattered.
It felt so elemental that it felt familiar to me, like when you meet someone who becomes so special that you feel like you have known him or her all your life. I knew these mothers well in some ways because I also have children and grandchildren whom I love. There I held the first baby I had held since my own tiny grand baby had died. I knew what it meant to love a child in peril. In other ways, I knew I could not begin to understand the struggles they endured just for their families to survive. We sat on split logs on this hill in Africa for several hours, and I still was not ready to leave. There was no need to rush as there had been with the WV boys in ET. Thank goodness, we still had some gifts left, although smaller ones because we had given away the bigger things on the earlier legs of our journey. Here, we could give something to each of the guests. We had small baggies with needles and safety pins for the moms, although we had to show them how a safety pin works. We had pencils and sharpeners and pens and balloons for all the kids, and we took Polaroid pictures of everyone. When we first gave them the pictures, while they were still black and had not yet developed, some had a brief look of skepticism, and it almost seemed they thought they were being duped by these strangers from so far away. Then there was a bright, engaging smile as their images were revealed and the trust restored. Many of them had never owned a picture of themselves or of their children before.

My daughter is a music teacher, and she brought a simple instrument and played a song for them. Before we left, they spontaneously sang a song for us. These heart songs reverberate in our hearts long after the tones have faded and carried us as we moved back to our homes 10,000 miles away.